Monthly Archives: January 2010

At least 1,000 endangered Olive Ridley turtles have been found dead in an Orissa beach since November, a senior state wildlife official said Wednesday.

The carcasses were spotted at various places between the mouths of the Devi and Dhamra rivers under Gahirmatha marine sanctuary, one of the world’s largest turtle nesting sites, in Kendrapada district, 174 km from here.

‘We have spotted the carcasses of at least 1,000 turtles this winter. Some of them were spotted this week,’ Divisional Forest Officer P.K. Behera told IANS.

Around this time last year, the total carcasses of turtles found on the same beach were about 2,000, he said.

The turtle mortality has come down this year due to various protection measures the government has initiated, he said.

Citing the measures, Behera said government has set up several camps near the coast and deployed dozens of officials to keep vigil.

The turtles arrive and congregate in the shallow coastal waters in October, they nest between December and March, and most hatchlings emerge by May.

Thousands of turtles have already arrived for mating. Behera said forest officials have already spotted the turtles in the sea water. They are likely to climb ashore for mass nesting in February, he said. About 700,000-800,000 endangered Olive Ridley turtles nest every winter at this site.

MAHENDRANAGAR, Jan 18: The rampant use of diclofenac and ketoprofen is putting vultures here on the verge of extinction, according to a study.

The study conducted by Nepal Bird Conservation Association says vultures are dying after consuming carcasses of cattle that were treated with diclofenac when alive.

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The study says that diclofenac use has reduced the population of vultures by 99 percent in Nepal and India.

The association has initiated a campaign in 10 districts in the tarai to raise awareness for vulture conservation and to ban the use of diclofenac and ketoprofen. The campaign has been initiated in districts including Kanchanpur, Kailali, Bardiya, Chitwan and Nawalparasi, among others, according to veterinarian Dr Surya Poudel of the association.

“Conservation of vultures is necessary to maintain biodiversity,” said Dr Poudel. “Vultures are natural cleaners as they keep the environment clean,” he added.

While diclofenac has been used in Nepal for decaces, ketoprofen, which is also contributing to reducing vulture population, has also been used in recent times. The production and distribution of both these medicines has been banned in Nepal and India. However, their use continues through illegal channels.

ONE THIRD of Ireland’s snail species are threatened with extinction, according to new research compiled by the National Biodiversity Data Centre.

The State body, which monitor’s the country’s biological diversity, has found that declining water quality, the building boom and certain agricultural and forestry practices are contributing to the species’ decline.

Ireland is home to 150 types of snail. Of these, two are now considered to be extinct, five critically endangered, 14 endangered, 26 vulnerable and six “near-threatened”.

Researchers have found that two native species are already extinct. The lapidary snail ( Helicigona lapicida ) , once found only in a gorge of the river Blackwater at Fermoy in east Co Cork, has “not been seen alive since 1968”, while the last recorded evidence of the mud pond snail ( Omphiscola glabra ) was in 1979 before it was “lost to habitat destruction”.

One of Ireland’s rarest varieties is the round-mouthed snail ( Pomatias elegans ) which is found only in New Quay, Co Clare. The report found it is “critically endangered” by “development pressure and physical disturbance”.

Snails on the “vulnerable list” include the whirlpool ram’s horn ( Anisus vortex ), traditionally found in clear, weedy water in larger streams, rivers and lakes. It has suffered a 63 per cent distributional decline since 1980 and “a major factor in its decline is falling water quality”.

The marsh whorl snail ( Vertigo antivertigo ) found across Ireland in fens, marshes, lakeshores and riverbanks has declined by more than 30 per cent in the last 30 years.

Among the six species of snail specifically protected by EU legislation, only one is considered safe in Ireland. The Kerry slug ( Geomalacus maculosus ) which is “restricted to sandstone areas of Kerry and west Cork”, has “a strong viable population and may be capable of expanding its range with global warming”.

However, the Kerry slug’s habitat can be endangered by “invasive” plants such as rhododendrons.

The data is contained in a new website, biodiversityireland.ie, which has been launched to mark the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity 2010. Its aim is to make “information more readily available for improved decision-making, particularly in relation to climate change, land-use change and biodiversity protection measures”.

The National Biodiversity Data Centre, which was established three years ago, is funded by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, and is based in Waterford.

As confirmed by Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 2009 has been a bad year for the endangered Manatees, as a record number of them died in the Florida waters this year.

According to a report released on Friday, the organization has pointed out that it’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute has managed to document a total of 419 manatee deaths in Florida waters between January 1 and December 11, which is the most for any year recorded since the track keeping began in 1974.

2006 was the last worst year recorded for the endangered species, with 417 of them dying, but a “lower-than-average” 317 deaths were reported for 2008.

The commission has, however, been quick to warn that manatee death can show huge swings on year-to-year basis and one particular year’s statistics should not be read too much into.

The report has also revealed that about 94 of the death were boat related 13% more as compared to last year, which has led the conservation groups to call for better management of the issue.

Statistics given in the recent report are just preliminary numbers, and a final report with absolute statistics will be released during the first week of January.

KOTA KINABALU – The world has less than 20 years left to save the orang utan, according to conservationists who predict the charismatic red ape will become extinct if no action is taken to protect its jungle habitat.

There are thought to be some 60,000 orang utan still living in the wild in Malaysia and Indonesia but deforestation and the expansion of palm oil plantations have taken a heavy toll.

“The orang utan habitat is fragmented and isolated by plantations, they can’t migrate, they can’t find mates to produce babies,” said Tsubouchi Toshinori from the Borneo Conservation Trust.

Environmentalists are calling for the creation of wildlife “corridors” in Malaysia to link the scraps of jungle where the orang utan has become trapped by decades of encroachment by loggers and oil palm companies.

Tsubouchi said that although studies had predicted that the orang utan would disappear within 50 years if their habitat continues to vanish, action needed to be taken within the next two decades to stall that process.

“We have to establish the corridors in 10 or 20 years, otherwise we won’t be able to do anything later,” he said.

Some 80% of the world’s orang utans live in Borneo, which is split between Malaysia and Indonesia, and the rest are found in Indonesia’s Sumatra province.

“What we have left today is maybe only 10% of what we used to have before,” said Marc Ancrenaz from the environmental group Hutan which focuses on conserving the 11,000 orang utans in Sabah.

An aerial survey carried out by wildlife authorities last year revealed some 1,000 orang utan treetop “nests” located in 100 small patches of forest completely surrounded by palm oil plantations.

“Unlike the rhinoceros whose numbers are so few, we still have a decent size population for the orang utan. If they are going to become extinct, it will not be in the next 10 years,” Ancrenaz said.

There are only about 250 Sumatran Rhinoceros left in Malaysia and Indonesia, making it the most highly endangered rhino species in the world.

Ecologist Eric Meijaard, who studies the orang utan in Indonesia, said the situation was even worse there and that deforestation was responsible for the loss of up to 3,000 orang utans a year in Borneo.

A villager, who killed and ate the last wild Indochinese tiger in China, has been sentenced to 12 years in jail and fined 85,000 US dollars.

Kang Wannian, the Chinese villager and another man shot dead the only known wild Indochinese tiger in China in February claiming it was self-defense.

The men said they ran and left the scene after they realized they had killed the Indochinese Tiger, which was on China’s list of endangered species.

They later came back to collect the corpse and took the skinned animal home and ate it with six other men.

Kang was sentenced to 10 years in jail for catching and killing a rare endangered animal plus two years for illegal possession of a gun. The court ordered him to pay a fine of 85,000 dollars, state media reported Tuesday.

The local court found four other men guilty of covering up the crime, and sentenced them to four years in jail.

The Indochinese tiger is on the brink of extinction, with fewer than 1,000 left in the forests of Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar.

Elsewhere, police said eight tigers and a lioness belonging to a private Russian travelling circus died during a 20-hour truck trip across Siberia.

Poor ventilation inside the heated truck is to blame for the death of the precious endangered animals. An investigation of this incident is underway.

A new analysis by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Pennsylvania State University, has shown that North American mammals are one-fifth to one-half the way towards mass extinction.

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Many scientists warn that the perfect storm of global warming and environmental degradation – both the result of human activity is leading to a sixth mass extinction equal to the “Big Five” that have occurred over the past 450 million years, the last of which killed off the dinosaurs 68 million years ago.

Yet estimates of how dire the current loss of species is have been hampered by the inability to compare species diversity today with the past.

By combining data from three catalogs of mammal diversity in the United States between 30 million years ago and 500 years ago, UCBerkeley and Penn State researchers show that the bulk of mammal extinctions occurred within a few thousand years after the arrival of humans, with losses dropping after that.

“The optimistic part of the study is that we haven’t come all that far on extinction in the past 10,000 years,” said co-author Anthony Barnosky, UCBerkeley professor of integrative biology.

“We have this pulse when humans had their first effect about 13,000 years ago, but diversity has remained pretty steady for about 10,000 years,” he added.

In the last 100 or so years, however, “we are seeing a lot of geographic range reductions that are of a greater magnitude than we would expect, and we are seeing loss of subspecies and even a few species. So, it looks like we are going into another one of these extinction events,” said Barnosky.

“I’m optimistic that, because we haven’t lost those species yet, if we redouble our conservation efforts we can stem the tide of extinctions and have those species around in the future,” he added. (ANI)

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"It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water - and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood". - Bernard DeVoto